Trevor Watson is a Director at Davis Coffer Lyons, the long established advisory firm specialising in leisure property. As a valued member of the Global Restaurant Investment Forum (GRIF) advisory board, Trevor is respected as a frank and direct source of industry opinion.

We could not miss the opportunity to capture his thoughts at the UK advisory board for GRIF 2017. As always, Trevor chose not to sit on the fence, especially with regards to the economic impact of BREXIT.

“We’re now at a major cross roads in the market with considerable uncertainty particularly resulting from BREXIT… revenue expectations are flattening, exchange rate changes are leading to challenges in terms of food costs which is going to bring down gross margins.”

Trevor concluded, “All the way down the profit and loss account of businesses, there are uncertainties and challenges which is going to have a profound effect on people’s appetite for growth in the future”.

Hope for the future lies in innovation

These uncertainties also offered up some new opportunities according to Trevor, particularly with regards to innovations in food delivery, which he identified as having real growth potential. In the video, he mentioned his focus area when attending GRIF 2017 was “crowd funding, private equity funding, conventional bank debt… the way that market is changing at an international level is something that I use day to day in my business”.

Trevor also appears in a BREXIT special feature shot at the advisory board, also featuring Heleri Rande (Puccini Group), James Hacon (Thai Leisure Group) and Thom Elliot (Pizza Pilgrims). See below for the special feature.

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